Back from the future or back to the past, Lacuna Coil (ab)uses the most important ingredients for their success formula again. That is, the duality between man and woman, the staccato guitar riffs, easy recognizable song-writing and the typical sphere, mostly created by the voice of Christina.

 

However, it would be a bad thing not to mention the unique things of Lacuna Coil. Although the music doesn’t sound that complicated, the band is able to use the individual capabilities in order to come up with something exciting. The silence and the vocals, being used in ‘What I see’, the different structures within the songs, like in ‘Fragments of Faith’ (a very nice head-knocking intro varied with half-tempo choruses) and the almost Celtic sphere in the songs are making ‘Karmacode’ worth listening more than once. Where bands like Within Temptation and Nightwish seem to focus mainly on the softness of this genre, Lacuna Coil chooses a more experimental way of song-writing and therefore I praise them.

 

Then, on the other hand, some tiny choices don’t make this album better than ‘Comalies’. ‘Closer’ has a weird bass solo in the end that totally doesn’t fit, the slow parts last a little bit too long in my opinion and the band seems to be focusing on all the instruments together instead of using some silent parts instead. I’d have preferred more contrast within the record, because now it’s almost as if I’m only listening to a few songs packed differently instead of thirteen individual parts of music.

 

So, Lacuna Coil continues making music in the way they do best. Fans of the band should by the album blind and I think a lot of new people will become interested as well. However, the band did not really improve themselves since the last record. Anyone who’s been looking forward to a massive breakthrough for the last four years will probably be disappointed in that way.